First you need to install the gem:

sudo gem install pabarcode

then the example in the previous post needs to change so as it uses the gem instead of the plain Ruby file:

require "rubygems"
require "pabarcode"

include PAbarcode

file = File.open("apog.txt")

file.each do |line|
  bc = line.slice(0..11)
  bc13 = Barcode.new(bc).get_ean_13
  puts bc13 + line.slice(12..line.length)
end

file.close

Yesterday, a colleague of mine asked me to take as input a file with 12 characters long barcodes and add a check digit assuming the barcodes are EAN13. I decided to do it and also start maintaining a set of barcode helper classes written in Ruby. I haven’t created a gem yet, cause the functionality is … lets say limited , but I plan to do so later.

You can go to

http://github.com/amiridis/rbarcode

and just download the barcode.rb file.

Here is how I used the barcode.rb file in order to transform the file:

require "barcode"

file = File.open("apog.txt")

file.each do |line|
  bc = line.slice(0..11)
  bc13 = Barcode.new(bc).get_ean_13
  puts bc13 + line.slice(12..line.length)
end

file.close

The file had the following format:

520532435284;1;09
520532435285;1;09
520532463580;1;09

and for the three lines above it produces:

5205324352841;1;09
5205324352858;1;09
5205324635807;1;09

Update: I have changed this project to a gem. You can read about it in my PAbarcode gem post.

We are 4 and we work 4 days per week remotely.

We do roughly 32.000 kilometers to go to work and get back home, so that’s 32.000 less per year.

Assuming our cars emit 160g of CO2 per kilometer on average.

We emit 5.120.000g less CO2 per year!!!

That’s 5.12 tonnes less CO2 per year!!!

And this is our action for the environment.

[ruby]<%= link_to ‘List of posts’, posts_path %>[/ruby]

or the following in the controller:

[ruby]redirect_to posts_url[/ruby]

Why should I use _url in the controller. I have used _path and it seems to work.

This is an explanation I found in a forum and I quote:

*_path are for views because ahrefs are implicitly linked to the current URL. So it’d be a waste of bytes to repeat it over and over. In the controller, though, *_url is needed for redirect_to because the HTTP specification mandates that the Location: header in 3xx redirects is a complete URL.

I started this activity in June 2009 by becoming a member of Builders, a RailsBridge project, that connects volunteers with projects for 501c3 non-profits.

So far, I am volunteering in two projects: 1) Sunset PTA and GlamourGals Foundation.

The basic reasons I do this are:

• Learn
• Network
• Give back

I learn asking questions or watching other team members doing stuff I don’t know. I discovered this way of learning is much faster than just reading and online searching. It cannot replace these of course, but it can help in addition to these methods of learning. Sometimes, when I learn something new from a fellow team member, I feel that it would be very difficult to discover it by myself.

When you volunteer to various projects, it is very easy to meet people with more or less the same mentality as yours. You get the opportunity to know them, open up your mind to new ways of thinking, choose who you like better and maybe create stronger relationships that may lead to other forms of cooperation in the future. This is extremely difficult to accomplish if one is only dedicated to their daily business because they don’t have many opportunities to network with new people.

Years and years, I have been receiving a lot of help from the Internet community in various forms: Forums, using free open source projects, becoming better by participating to various communities, educating myself, watching the improvement of commercial products because of the pressure of open source equivalent products, and more. I give back to the community by actively contributing and this makes me feel good. It also helps sustain the community and continue growing it.

This is going to be my second deed and I’ll keep posting any news that fall under this category.

DISCLAIMER: There are more ways and many situations that are not described here. This is only a note to self that may also be useful to you.

Pull from your remote repository to make sure everything is up to date

[shell light="1"]git pull origin master[/shell]

Create a new local branch for keeping your changes way from your local master branch

[shell light="1"]git branch my_new_feature[/shell]

Switch to that branch and start working

[shell light="1"]git checkout my_new_feature[/shell]

After finishing work and running successfully any cukes/specs/tests, commit

[shell light="1"]git commit -am "Implemented my new super duper feature"[/shell]

Then, switch back to local master and pull if you need to also merge any changes since you first pulled

[shell light="1"]
git checkout master
git pull origin master
[/shell]

Merge the local feature branch to master and run any cukes/specs/tests and if everything passes push changes

[shell light="1"]
git merge my_new_feature
git push origin master
[/shell]

This is my preference: I delete the temporary local branch when everything is merged and pushed

[shell light="1"]git branch -d my_new_feature[/shell]

Update – Here is a more sophisticated approach: Agile git and the story branch pattern

[shell light="1"]
$ git log
[/shell]

command doesn’t show the actual modified/added/deleted files. You can use the following command for that:

[shell light="1"]
$ git log –pretty –stat

or

$ git log –pretty=format:"[%h] %ae, %ar: %s" –stat
[/shell]

I found the latter in one of Alex Young’s tweets.

If you have any favorite git log formats, please feel free to mention them in a comment.

For RSpec:

[shell light="1"]$ gem install rspec[/shell]

For Cucumber:

[shell light="1"]$ gem install cucumber[/shell]

Optionally, if you are on Windows, for color output you can also install Win32Console:

[shell light="1"]$ gem install win32console[/shell]

Step 1: Find out your Highrise iCalendar URL

You do that by navigating to Tasks and looking at the bottom of the page for a link that says “Subscribe to your iCalendar task feed”. Clicking on that link will take you to another page where you can find your iCalendar URL. You copy that and you go to the next step.

Step 2: Go to your Google Calendar

Locate your “Other calendars” panel and click Add, to add a new calendar. Choose “Add by URL” in order to enter the iCalendar URL you found in the previous step.

Google Calendar Add By URL

Enter the iCalendar URL in the “Public Calendar Access” field and press “Add”. That’s it. This calendar will automatically contain all your Highrise tasks. You can go to the calendar settings and add a default notification setting for SMS. That way, every Highrise task will end up in your mobile phone.

What I really like about this tool is the ease of use and the lack of unneeded options and clicks to get your job done.

I use Jing whenever I want to create a new case using FogBugz. For example whenever I want to report a bug or ask for an enhancement, I may capture the part of the screen of the application, annotate and save it to attach it then to a new case in FogBugz or send it directly using Skype to the remote programmer.

Sometimes, I even capture a video showing how to reproduce a bug. Capturing a video with Jing is very easy because it does exactly what you need, nothing more and nothing less.

Here is an example FogBugz case with a Jing screen capture with annotations for one of our internal projects. We develop this application using DevExpress XAF which is a very good framework for developing intranet applications.

FogBugz Case

This way, I can write fewer words than if I hadn’t prepared the screen capture. I will also try to post a video capture example in the future.